The GENES Blog (GEnealogy News and EventS): Top stories concerning ancestral research in Britain, Ireland, and their diasporas, from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit The GENES Blog if you do so. To contact me please email chrismpaton @ outlook.com.

PRONI - After the Gathering and Sunningdale demise conferences on YouTube

Queen's University's Institute of Collaborative Research in the Humanities, DCAL and the Ministerial Advisory Group of the Ulster Scots Academy hosted this symposium focussing on diaspora histories, representations, culture and politics following the events of the Irish government's Gathering year.

This event was held in PRONI on 6th June 2014.
Speakers included in this video are:

'Disclaimer' - ***Please note that PRONI is not responsible for any language in this video which some people may find offensive***

The 40th anniversary of the establishment of the first power-sharing executive is an opportunity to reflect on the nature of democratic practice in Northern Ireland. This one-day conference, which took place on 23rd May 2014, aimed to explore not only the reasons for the sudden demise of the 'Sunningdale Assembly' during the Ulster Workers' Council Strike but also the divided legacies that demise bestowed on Northern Irish politics.

The questions that surround the Sunningdale power-sharing experiment continue to resonate within Northern Ireland today:

- Democracy has widened, but to what extent has it deepened?
- In what ways and in what areas are people's voices not being heard?
- How can political disenchantment, apathy and differing views on democratic legitimacy be managed?
- What do we, as a society, do about groups who feel alienated from mainstream politics?
- What are the reasons behind the resilience of violent factions?

This unique event brought together historians, journalists, commentators, eyewitnesses to the executive, archivists and political scientists to address these and other issues relating to the long struggle for democracy in Northern Ireland. It aimed to assess the lessons of the Sunningdale failure and asks how they apply to contemporary Northern Ireland.